<< 1 >>
Rating: 
Summary: "The devil has entered...his hoofprints are everywhere."
Review: Opening in 1955, when the French are battling insurgents for control of Algeria, Anna, a Swiss resident and former circus performer, and Nassreddine, a Berber from the mountains of Algeria, travel by bus from a remote mountain village to Algiers to formalize their marriage. As the bus makes its way through the countryside, it is stopped by French soldiers, and Nassreddine is arrested, taken to jail, and tortured unmercifully. Anna is forced to go on to the village without him, but when Nassreddine finally escapes and makes his way back, he finds his mother's house empty.
Alternating back and forth in time, author Benmalek traces the lives of Anna and Nassreddine and their parents, separately and together, for seventy years, in the process giving the political and social history of Algeria. Whether under the rule of the French in the 1950s or the Algerian Liberation Front (FLN), which defeated them, ordinary citizens live lives fraught with danger. Armed Islamic fundamentalists, which fought both the French and the Liberation Front for control of the population in the 1950s, have, by 1997 become a major force. Torture, murders, mutilations, and executions, for which the French were condemned, have continued into the 1990s.
Into this atmosphere of civil war in 1996, Anna, now in her sixties, returns to Algiers from Switzerland in search of Nassreddine. Hiring Jallal, a nine-year-old orphan who sells peanuts and individual cigarettes to act as a translator, and wearing a traditional haik, she is determined to make her way back to Nassreddine's home village, the place they had always agreed to use as their common contact point. Anna's story alternates with that of Nassreddine and moves back and forth in time as both try to reach the village.
This story of a great love that crosses boundaries is not for the faint of heart. As the lives of Anna and Nassreddine, Jallal (the boy-translator), their parents, and their friends come to life, the reader is exposed to unimaginable horrors. Though the novel is melodramatic, it is not melodrama for the sake of false emotion. Life in Algeria is tenuous at best, survival seems almost accidental, and everyone is a pawn of someone else. The ending will not satisfy all readers, but it is consistent with the demonstrated fragility of life throughout the novel. Dramatic, horrifying, sensuously descriptive, but offering no promises of a glorious future, the novel is a grim reminder that when governments do not protect individuals, love and understanding are all that is left to give meaning to life. Mary Whipple
Rating:
Summary: Moving and beautiful
Review: The author is a wonderful writer: the story is taut, the characters have depth, the description of a besieged country mixed with a beautiful love story is fairly riveting. However, the ending was like walking up to a door and not being able to open it. I don't need tidy or happy endings, but this story could have done with a little resolution.
<< 1 >>
|
